Work the Works

Sunday, March 6th, 2005
Lent 4A
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 9:1-41

1As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ 3Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. 4We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. 5As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ 6When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, 7saying to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. 8 The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, ‘Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?’ 9Some were saying, ‘It is he.’ Others were saying, ‘No, but it is someone like him.’ He kept saying, ‘I am the man.’ 10But they kept asking him, ‘Then how were your eyes opened?’ 11He answered, ‘The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, “Go to Siloam and wash.” Then I went and washed and received my sight.’ 12They said to him, ‘Where is he?’ He said, ‘I do not know.’ 13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. 14Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, ‘He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.’ 16Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.’ But others said, ‘How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?’ And they were divided. 17So they said again to the blind man, ‘What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.’ He said, ‘He is a prophet.’ 18The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight 19and asked them, ‘Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?’ 20His parents answered, ‘We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 21but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.’ 22His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23Therefore his parents said, ‘He is of age; ask him.’ 24So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, ‘Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.’ 25He answered, ‘I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.’ 26They said to him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’ 27He answered them, ‘I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?’ 28Then they reviled him, saying, ‘You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.’ 30The man answered, ‘Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. 31We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. 32Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. 33If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’ 34They answered him, ‘You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?’ And they drove him out.
35 Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ 36He answered, ‘And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.’ 37Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.’ 38He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshiped him. 39 Jesus said, ‘I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.’ 40Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not blind, are we?’ 41Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, “We see,” your sin remains.

I’m a bedtime reader.

I don’t mean I read to the kids at bedtime … though I DO, sometimes, I mean that when I go to bed at night I have to at least open a book and read a few paragraphs in order to go to sleep.

As far back as I can remember, lying down in bed hasn’t been about going to sleep as quickly as I can, but about curling up with a good book. As a result, I have a stack of books next to my side of the bed, in, on, or under the nightstand, as well as on the floor.

Over the years the variety of books has broadened. I’m a science fiction fan, so for a long time that was all you could find in the stack. But lately, I’ve expanded the options. I’ve got Herman Wouk’s “War and Remembrance” next to the bed, as well as a couple of bestsellers.

I also have a book co-written by Tony Campolo and Brian McLaren, entitled Adventures in Missing the Point, How the Culture-Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel. In it, Campolo and McLaren address issues facing the Church today, under three main subheadings: God, World, and Soul. Under each, they address various sub-issues. Under God, they speak about salvation, theology, the Kingdom of God, the End Times, and the Bible. Under “World”, they touch on Evangelism, social action, culture, women in ministry, leadership, seminary, environmentalism, and homosexuality. Under “Soul, they speak on Sin, Worship, Doubt, Truth, and on Being Postmodern. Each has his own ‘take’ on the issue, and each responds to the other’s essays – a good example of good dialogue around a given subject.

I bought the book in September or October, I think, and I’ve only gotten a few chapters into it. Campolo and McLaren posit an argument that the Church has been co-opted, that we are too … influenced by our culture, rather than the other way around, to bring about the radical changes that the Gospel of Jesus Christ can make happen.

I’m not talking about making change happen by controlling the legislative process and effecting those changes through laws. I’m talking about individual, life-altering, face-to-face contact that ends up transforming both participants.

We’ve just finished reading the ninth chapter of the Gospel of John. Besides the length of the reading, is there any single event in the passage that stands out most for you?

Are you struck by the way everyone seems to keep trying to pass the buck when they are asked about Jesus, or more by the way the Pharisees keep asking all these questions all those questions, or by the way the neighbors supposedly couldn’t say for sure if the man who could now see was the same man they’d known all their lives?

In some ways, it can almost read like a keystone cops episode, if the subject weren’t so serious.

Here’s what we have: Jesus is walking along with his disciples and they run into a man who is blind. The disciples ask Jesus why the man is blind, is it because of HIS sins or the sins of his parents? It is telling that they already had what seemingly were the only two answers they would consider as plausible in their heads when they asked the question. It is indicative of the reactions we read of throughout the rest of the chapter from all parties. People were not used to thinking outside the accepted norms of society. And that society at the time was controlled by the Pharisees. Well, by the Romans, I suppose, ultimately, but in first-century Palestine, the day-to-day stuff was left up to the locals themselves. The Romans knew that they – the locals - were MUCH better at micromanaging than the Romans were, except where circumstances demanded direct intervention. That would come later.

Anyway, Jesus tells the disciples that it was neither his own nor his parent’s sins that caused the man to be born blind, but rather he was born blind so that God’s works may be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me. In other words, there was a greater purpose … a deeper reason for which this happened. Watch!

What does he do? Jesus spits on the ground, makes mud, spreads it on the man’s eyes, and sends him off to the pool of Siloam to rinse off. And when the man does, he opens his eyes and he can see. The healing takes all of two verses out of the 41 into which the chapter is broken up. That part of the narrative ends at verse 8. For the next 33 verses the arguments go back and forth, about who Jesus was, if he was a sinner (because he’d healed on the Sabbath), if the man actually was who he said he was, talking to the neighbors and the PARENTS about who the man was, then arguing back and forth about who might or might not be a disciple of Christ, likening him to a disciple of Moses … the litany seems endless. There is so much talk filling the rest of the chapter that by the time we get to the end, we almost forget what started the whole argument in the first place: a man was healed by the power and the love of God through Jesus Christ.

The Pharisees missed the point. They were so caught up in the fact that the Sabbath had been violated, they couldn’t get past the fact that Jesus had, in their minds, sinned. It didn’t fit in their heads that God might actually do something outside the strict parameters they had set for themselves by codifying those 613 laws.

Richard Lischer, professor of Homiletics at Duke Divinity School, writes the following:

‘The question of origins pervades the Gospel of John. In our story we have the ancient version not of Who's on First? but of Where's He from? The authorities sink to the oldest of all debate tactics: assail the source of your opponent's argument. Poison the well. Where is this Jesus from? What rabbinical school did he attend? Where did he learn to break God's law? The formerly blind man replies, "He restored my sight. Where do you think he's from?"

Does this story mean that you must possess special knowledge to be a follower of Jesus? Must you see the way God sees?

No -- not knowledge, but acknowledgment.

The formerly blind man did not know all the correct religious phrases with which to interpret his salvation. He was not pious in the traditional sense or even respectful of his elders. What he knew for sure was that once upon a time he sat in darkness, and now the whole world was drenched in sunlight. And he acknowledged that.

"One thing I know," he said. And as he makes his witness to Jesus, we realize that the man blind from birth has a multitude of sons and daughters with their own stories to tell. "One thing I know," one of you might say (sounding like the Samaritan woman in John 4), “is that when I was going through my divorce I hurt so much I couldn't sleep or eat, and I was so filled with hate I couldn't think, but somehow I got through it, and I've come to recognize that the somehow was Jesus."

"One thing I know." How is that for ironic understatement? As if the only teensy little thing you happen to know is -- who saved your life! No, you start not with special knowledge but with acknowledgment. You may begin not with a public profession but with a prayer to the Light of the World.

The man's profession has a terrible consequence for him and for all of us. He is cast out of the synagogue. He is cut off from Torah, family, the sweet--smelling incense of the Sabbath, the certitude of the Law -- all because he looked deeply and directly into the Light.

If J. Louis Martyn and other scholars are right, this story reflects the historic parting of the ways between the synagogue and the Jews who believed in Jesus. We were once so close. Just how close we still are can be seen in those moments when we acknowledge our dependence on God, and place no limits on who and how God saves in Jesus Christ. If we read this story as an ironic comedy and nothing more, we miss the loneliness of its final scene in which Jesus and the man converse outside the synagogue. But if we catch its underlying pathos, we will see this story for the tragedy it really is, and wait upon God to write a new ending.’

So the question for us today, here at Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton is this: Are we limiting the way we are viewing God’s work in the world, are we blind to the radically unexpected nature of the Gospel, are we ONLY looking for God to work in a certain way, through certain people, in a certain timeframe, in a certain sequence, or are we ready to acknowledge that God can and does work in ways we never even knew existed?

Can we be open to those unexpected ways in our own hearts, in our own lives, seemingly insignificant coincidences that turn out to be God-things?

What happened this week in your life? Looking back, was there something that struck you as odd, something you maybe couldn’t quite put your finger on, that now, looking back on it, seems to have been one of those instances, one of those thin places where you could catch a glimpse of the Kingdom shining through? If it DID happen, share it with a friend, or a family member. It is in those events that we find our hope and our courage … and the ability to recognize and to continue to work the works that God has for us to do.

Let’s pray.

Conversations at the Well

Sunday, February 27, 2005
Lent 3A
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
John 4:5-42

5So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. 7A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’ 8(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink,” you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ 11The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ 13Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ 15The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’ 16Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ 17The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; 18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ 19The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ 21Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ 25The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ 26Jesus said to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’
27 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you want?’ or, ‘Why are you speaking with her?’ 28Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?’ 30They left the city and were on their way to him. 31Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, ‘Rabbi, eat something.’ 32But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ 33So the disciples said to one another, ‘Surely no one has brought him something to eat?’ 34Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35Do you not say, “Four months more, then comes the harvest”? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. 36The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.” 38I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.’ 39Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I have ever done.’ 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41And many more believed because of his word. 42They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.’

What moves, motivates, enthralls, engages, and generally affects us more than anything? What convinces, persuades, perplexes, challenges, and frustrates us most? Words.

Granted, there are, among us, those who are mostly unaffected by words, but more so by actions. And we all strive to strike a balance between the two.

There is an inherent danger in swinging too far in one or the other direction. When we are too caught up in words, we lose the sense of what it means to put actions behind the words, and when we are too involved in DOING things – be they all noble and worthwhile, we can lose the perspective gained by examination and reflection provided by words.

I remember sitting in classes in college, and I remember sometimes lively discussions, engaging professors, and challenging classmates. But the most significant events – the most powerfully moving moments I remember about those four years were in the midst of the conversations I had with my roommates, usually too late at night, and too far off the subject we were supposed to be studying, but that’s another story. The conversations would sometimes go on for days or weeks, stopping and then picking back up several times over that time. As we thought of new issues related to the subject, or questions arose that we’d not thought of before, the thread of the conversation continued. To some degree, they are still going on today. When we got together in Louisville Christmas before last, there were a couple of times when all it took was a single comment, and the conversation that we began back in 1983 picked right back up.

The same goes for seminary. I remember being even more enthralled in the classes than I had been in college – we were studying the stuff of LIFE. We were learning about and reflecting on exactly what it meant for faith and life to intersect … more often than not, we ended up finding that it’s not so much an intersection as a shared lane, depending on how you approach it.

While the subject matter in class was different from those in college, the most significant moments in seminary again came in the form of conversations, and not necessarily conversations in a classroom, but in an apartment, or in the library, or the cafeteria, or the post office. There used to be a couple of bulletin boards, that were a kind of no-mans’ land. They were primarily used to post notes about stuff you wanted to sell, or buy, or apartments for rent, or looking for a roommate signs, that sort of thing.

But they were also an open forum. They were the precursor to the internet chat rooms we have today. People would post letters, or messages, intentionally leaving room for people to post replies – or even if they didn’t leave room, people would find a space to jot down some sort of response.

It used to be one of my favorite pastimes: going to check my mail, and stopping to read the latest post. There were some pretty significant events noted on those boards. A lifelong friend of mine, also a student at the seminary, announced that he was homosexual, and that he was leaving seminary. People would post accusations and counter-accusations, others would throw in a comment to try to make light of a situation, and others would then jump on THAT person for not taking things seriously enough.

Southern at the time was a relatively healthy mix of views and ideas, of thoughtful opinions and interpretations of the usual hot-button issues, along with a growing number of stridently closed individuals who would in the end strengthen their grip on the institution to the point where the interchange of ideas is mostly in one direction: from the administration to the student. That is probably an unfair statement. But comparing the then and now is to compare two institutions with radically different approaches … and to some degree, objectives.

There are moments we savor for what has happened in them. Moments where we are caught up in what is being done – in the action of the moment -- that leaves a lasting impact. Building a house for someone, if you’ve ever been involved in a habitat for humanity project, that can be a life-imprinting event. If you’ve ever been involved in disaster relief, that can be as well. If you’ve ever been involved in saving someone’s life, or in averting an accident, things like that don’t happen and then fade quickly into memory. YOUR life is changed, not only the life of the other person.

We have a little of both in the passage today.

The words spoken at the well, the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman hold some of those first moments, where the sparking of ideas and the point-counterpoint of the questions and answers engage the Samaritan woman’s mind as well as our own.

What’s the difference between the Samaritans and the Jews? Why does one claim Jerusalem’s temple as ‘the’ place to worship, while the other claims Mount Gerizim, next to where they were carrying on the conversation, as ‘the’ place? Those were questions SHE raised then.

Christ’s response to her then and to us now is the same. The time is coming when it won’t matter so much WHERE you worship, as much as it will matter that you worship in Spirit and in Truth. We can become so wrapped up in the formalities of worship, can’t we? Jesus was saying it’s not about the formalities; it’s about where your hearts are. it’s not about how you sing, or if you follow a set pattern, it’s not about how it looks to others, it is about US – YOU and ME being in communion with each other. THAT is what it’s about. If you’re not in communion with me inside your heart, what difference does it make which four walls you stand inside of on any given Sunday?

The conversation continues, and what results is action. That happens today even as it did nearly two thousand years ago in Samaria. Jesus never engaged someone in conversation to have them walk away unchanged, somehow unaffected, or ignorant of the significance of what just took place.

In this case, after Jesus tells the Samaritan woman who she really is – confronts her, as it were, with her true self, she is compelled to run into town and tell her neighbors and the rest of the townspeople who she’s been talking to at the well.

THEIR response, in turn, is to be … drawn out to HIM. There’s always the possibility that it happened to be a slow day in town – nothing showing on TV, all of it reruns … but it’s also true that the story the woman at the well was sharing was pretty … compelling … we are so easily intrigued by people who can tell us things about ourselves that sometimes even WE are afraid to admit… I wonder how many of the people who ran out to meet Jesus were approaching him thinking “there’s no WAY he’ll be able to guess so-and-so about me.”

And yet, Paul tells us there will come a day when all our secret thoughts will be shouted from the mountaintops… for all to hear.

A little unsettling isn’t it?

I wonder how many of the other townspeople continued their conversations with Jesus around that same well over the next two days.

How many looked him in the eyes and realized they were looking into the face of an infinitely compassionate God, who SO wanted to be a part of their lives that he came to earth to live among them … how many hearts sang back when they heard the melody of God’s voice singing to them by name across the way?

How many of us have let the thread of our conversation with the Savior … drop for far too long? How long has it been since we engaged in the conversation that is our working out our salvation with fear and trembling? How long has it been since we raised that question that has been on our mind with our fellow pilgrims?

There’s room at the well for all of us.

Let’s pray.

Salt and Light

Sunday, February 20th, 2005
Lent 2A
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton (WMU Missions Emphasis Sunday)
Text: Matthew 5:13-16 (not from the Revised Common Lectionary)

“Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste Godliness? You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.

Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.”
(From The Message )

The life marked by the beatitudes is not to be lived in isolation.

We often assume that these inner qualities can only be developed or displayed in isolation from the world; but Jesus wants us to live them out before the world.

That’s why we were called to the Northern Neck by the Rappahannock Baptist Association and by Jerusalem Baptist Church, to live out our faith before the world that we find in Essex, Richmond, Westmoreland, Northumberland and Lancaster counties.

Jesus points to broadness in the impact of the disciples that must have seemed almost ridiculous at the time; how could these humble Galileans salt the earth, or light the world? But they did!

We were faced with the impact we could make – as individuals, as a congregation, and as an association, through the ministry to the migrant and Hispanic community on the Northern Neck very soon after meeting and getting to know the people we work with FROM that community.

Within a couple of months of meeting them, we had already been extended an invitation to come visit them in their homes in Mexico. At the time, it honestly didn’t seem to be anything more than a dream. Time constraints and other demands and commitments seemed to confine us – in the best sense of the word – to the work we are involved in on a day-to-day basis both here at Jerusalem and in the Hispanic community that is here at any given time of year. So we went on about our business … the business of the Kingdom, we hoped.

Back to the passage: Notice that Jesus does not challenge us to become "salt" or "light"; He simply says that we are - and to put it bluntly, we are either fulfilling or failing that responsibility.

Salt as a picture of the Christian

In Jesus' day, salt was a valued commodity; Roman soldiers were sometimes paid with salt, giving rise to the phrase "worth his salt". Salt was used to preserve meats, and to retard decay; Christians being salt points to their preservation of society.

And as today, salt was used to add flavor - Christians should be a "flavorful" people. However, salt must keep its "saltiness" to be of any value; it is rightfully trampled under foot; in the same way, too many Christians lose their "flavor" and become good for nothing.


****

On the 5th day of our visit to Mexico, we were sitting in Isidra and Norberto’s living room, having just gotten up from an afternoon nap that they insisted on, after having traveled from Tlaxcala, where we’d spent the first part of our trip with Mundo Perez and HIS family, visiting the men who work in White Stone and their families. Isidra began to talk about how much it means to her to be able to worship with us when we have our gatherings. She said she feels the presence of God when we are together.

She spoke about how she doesn’t practice the veneration of saints, and freely tells others who do that they don’t need to be praying to saints, but directly to God through Jesus, that it is through faith in HIM that they are receive salvation. She spoke about her local priest coming to her house and leading a study on the importance of studying scripture, of understanding how it can impact their lives, and how important it is to seek daily communion with Christ. She went on to say that the priest still talked to the group of women about the importance of observing the sacraments, and how critical they were to carrying out their faith, so there was no question about where she stood in relationship to the Roman Catholic tradition, but she still looked straight at us and said ‘There needs to be a Baptist presence here.” I came across a Baptist Church not too far from here several years ago, and I’ve not been back by that area since then, but I think we need to go to see if it is still there, and at least establish contact with the Pastor and the people who attend there.’

This was a devout Catholic telling us that there needed to be a Baptist presence in her city. It made me wonder what we had shown her Baptists to be. I honestly wondered if we were presenting her with a true portrait of what Baptist believe … and the longer I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that I think she came away with exactly the impression … that God wanted her to have. I don’t mean that we were necessarily that attuned to what God wanted to come out of the encuentros, though I hope we were more attuned than not, but I think that we were tuned ENOUGH to what God has been trying to say through the ministry and the heart of the Rappahannock Baptist Association, and Jerusalem Baptist Church in particular, to where the Hispanic Community that has chosen to JOIN with us is coming to understand that though there may be differences between us, we have at the heart of what we believe a common bond, the Lordship of Christ, and that that is a starting point for all the rest.

*****

Back to the passage:

Light.

The purpose of light is to illuminate and expose what is present; therefore light must be exposed before it can be of any value - if it is hidden under a bucket, it is no longer useful. It goes against the very nature and purpose of light for it to be hidden - so a Christian is truly fighting himself and the Holy Spirit by never letting his light so shine before men. Even as lamps are placed higher so their light can be more effective, we should look for ways to let our light shine in greater and broader ways.

Jesus gives the Christian both a great compliment and responsibility when He says that we are the light of the world; He claimed that title for Himself as He walked this earth (John 8:12 and 9:5).

The purpose in letting our light so shine by doing good works is so that others will glorify God, not us.

*****

That same evening, Isidra and Norberto convinced us to go with them to see if we could find that Baptist Church she’d seen so many years ago. By then it was nighttime, but still relatively early in the evening. We walked down to the main street, about 2 or 3 blocks down from their home, and hailed a taxi.

Taxis in Mexico are not like taxis here in the States. They are mostly, though not exclusively, Volkswagen Bugs, with the front passenger seat pulled out, to make exiting and entering the cars easier. Picture this: there were 4 of us, two of us pretty tall. Occasionally you’d see a larger model taxi go by, but not very often. One finally did stop, but it was the standard VW Bug. Isidra, Leslie and I piled into the back seat, and Norberto squatted in the front, beside the driver, where the passenger seat would have been had it been left in. Isidra explained to the taxi driver where to go, and as we got closer, the conversation got more specific about what we were looking for. We finally came out and asked the driver if he’d seen a Baptist Church around, as he was driving his fares back and forth. He thought a minute and finally said “I’m not sure. I think there may be one at ‘such-and-such a place, but I can’t be certain.” He proceeded to take us to a couple of churches, one where there was no meeting going on, and the other where there was. Both were Pentecostal. As we pulled away, Isidra tried to explain what a Baptist Church was like. She finally drew it down to the point of saying “Baptists are just like Catholics.”

The part of me that studied Baptist history in the face of state-sanctioned religious institutions cringed every time she said that. But the part of me that longs for a world where, rather than tearing each other down, or spending more time telling you why you should belong to this or that denomination, and how much better one’s chosen tradition is than others, denominations could recognize a common purpose, a shared GOAL, THAT part of me was thrilled to hear her say that.

Don’t get me wrong. I am proud to be a baptist, to stand for historic baptist principles of soul competency, local church autonomy, and religious freedom, but at the same time I long to join with other traditions and agree to disagree on some things but still maintain a common union … under the Lordship of Christ.

As the taxi ride got longer and longer, the conversation with the driver got deeper and deeper into the subject of why there are so many denominations. I finally spoke up in the midst of the expressions of some confusion and a little frustration, to say that I thought it was a good thing that there are so many denominations, that everyone needs to find a place where they are comfortable expressing their faith as they understand it, even though that results in differences, and sometimes arguments, my hope was that there would come a day when all our different traditions could be seen for what they are – a reflection of the wonderful varieties God has gifted us with – varieties of thought and understanding, varieties of styles and presentations, varieties of song and praise.

*****

A key thought in both the pictures of salt and light: distinction

There are, of course, any number of distinctions between Baptists and Catholics. But those distinctions disappear in the face of someone who has no faith, no inkling of what it means to have a relationship with God, who has never experienced that redeeming and welcoming love in the faces and words and actions of a congregation wholly given over to the task of being Christ’s presence in this world.

Salt is needed because the world is rotting and decaying; if our Christianity is also rotting and decaying, it won't be any good. Light is needed because the world is in darkness; if our Christianity imitates the darkness, we have nothing to show the world.

To be effective we must seek and display the Christian distinctive; we can never affect the world for Jesus by becoming like the world. So how will we be different?

The passage ends with a short, but beautiful picture at the end:

“Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.”

What was so overwhelming to us over the course of those 7 days in January, was that everywhere we went, everyone we greeted and hugged and sat down and talked with, all the families of those we’ve sought to minister to here, showed us what it is like to be on the receiving end of that gift – and prompted us to open up with God.

Let’s pray.

Temptation


Sunday, February 13th, 2005
Lent 1
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 4:1-11

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ 4But he answered, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”’ 5Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, “He will command his angels concerning you,” and “On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”’ 7Jesus said to him, ‘Again it is written, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”’ 8Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; 9and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ 10Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! for it is written, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”’ 11Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

‘Paso de eso” …

My friend Juan looked at me in an entirely benign manner. We’d been talking, at his initiative, about differences between the Catholic and Baptist traditions, and the differing understandings of scripture. When he came out with that phrase, it was to emphasize for me that he didn’t really believe all things espoused by the Roman Catholic Church, and yet in the next breathe, he freely admitted that, although there were aspects of the Baptist tradition that he appreciated, he could never even consider becoming a Baptist because his father would simply disown him. His parents freely admitted that even they didn’t agree with much if any of the Roman Catholic Church’s strictures, imposed on them under the nearly 40 years dictatorship of Francisco Franco in Spain, which at the time had ended a little less than a decade earlier, but nonetheless, they had made it clear to him that if he (Juan) were to join up with a splinter sect such as we Baptists were still viewed as being at the time, he would be summarily disowned. And that was something he couldn’t even consider.

‘Paso de eso” …

Literally, “I’m past that”. In contemporary language, “I’m OVER it.”

It was the phrase I most often heard in conversations with Spaniards about matters of faith while serving as a missionary journeyman there back in the 80’s. It was the single most disheartening factor with which I was confronted in the two years I was there.

Having come from a background that was grounded in faith, breathed faith, and tried to live faith, day in and day out, over the previous 22 years, it was the first time I was confronted with that radically different a world view from my own. I would have expected a gap in understanding if I would have met a person of a different faith altogether, but on some level, whether I am conversing with a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, or a Buddhist, there is a core element of faith … an awareness of the divine … granted, within that shared awareness there are VERY different ideas, but there is an underpinning of knowledge in being aware of something greater than ourselves among people of faith. That is what allows interfaith dialogues to at least begin.

This was RADICALLY different, meaning, at the very root, there was no commonality. “I’m over that”, implying that I’m beyond that, I’m above that, I’m better than that … a sense that matters of faith are all but useless, if not harmful.

Where do you begin to respond to that? Where do you begin to build a bridge that says “I know we see differently here on this issue that is critical for me, but trivial for you … lets find a way to continue to carry on this conversation and neither of us feel like we’re wasting our time.”

I remember the last conversation I had with Juan, the day before I left Oviedo. He told me he envied me the assurance I found in faith, and I told him that I wished that same assurance for him.

What was so overwhelming about that being ‘over’ it was that it was so prevalent. It wasn’t just a few people here and there, intellectuals and cynics and artists, or communist party activists or militant atheists who were saying it; it was the vast majority of the general population that I came in contact with.

Last August, when we were on vacation in Kentucky and had a chance to visit with our friend Claude, he told us about his trip to Europe earlier that summer. He told me of the people he’d met, and the conversations he’d had with friends who had moved there and THEIR friends who were from there, and at the end of it, he surprised me by saying “with all their shortcomings, I would much rather have an Evangelical Protestant Fundamentalist in power than one of the folks over there – at least THEY BELIEVE in something!”

So let’s turn to the text for a bit. I’m sure most of us have heard some message on the temptation of Christ before. It only took me a couple of minutes of searching to find the traditional interpretations of the temptations that Christ faced in the wilderness:

1. Turning stones into bread: Jesus had been in the wilderness fasting for 40 days up until that point. Being tempted to feed himself after going hungry for over a month would seem to be a low blow, but it is at out weakest that we are confronted with what most beguiles us. Jesus was being tempted to put his own needs first – to be self-serving.
2. Bow down to Satan in order to rule all the world highlights the human lust for power and dominance. Jesus knew going into his ministry that he was going to be proclaiming a Kingdom different from that which the people were expecting. Here he was turning away from a final attempt to go about his ministry in the expected fashion.
3. To jump from the pinnacle of the temple in order to be caught by God’s angels before striking his foot on the ground is an appeal to … vanity, when it comes down to it. An appeal to that part of us that longs to be noticed or valued. To get our 15 minutes of fame, as it were. Jesus knew that was all it would be; a temporary flash in the pan, and he knew that the consequences would be eternal.
We can all, to some degree, identify with each of those temptations. We’ve all experienced moments when we would’ve gladly given in, and perhaps some of us may have even YIELDED, but this is a Gospel of grace, of forgiveness, and of reconciliation.

We give in because we’re human. Though we can help it at times, we are flawed creatures, “frail children of dust,” as Bill Hendricks used to address all of his classes at seminary. We can live in regret for what we’ve done and dwell on it, or we can move on in the sure and certain knowledge that God can use us despite ourselves at our worst.

But the lesson of the gospel today also goes in a different direction. Temptation is, unfortunately, rarely as obvious as if Satan himself were standing next to you with horns and a pitchfork asking you to conjure up a Big Mac with fries and a coke because you’re hungry. Temptation rarely offers us the opportunity to discern it from the good we might do, from the good we might BE, if we choose one way or the other.

In the film ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’, Willem Dafoe as Jesus is confronted with his last temptation, coming down from the cross, marrying Mary Magdalene, and going on to live a ‘normal’ life of anonymity and child rearing, working in his carpenter’s shop and providing a quiet living for his family.

At their heart, temptations pull us away from our walk with God, this continuing relationship that develops as we each get to know each other. It is ultimately why God created us: for companionship. Our greatest temptation each day is to live the day as though God didn’t matter, to go about our regular daily activities without a hint of God’s presence or movement in our lives. God’s deepest sorrow is found when we walk away from him. His greatest joy is found when we run to him, like children eager to show our heavenly father what we’ve discovered, in creation, in ourselves, in our families or our family of faith that reflects him and his love for the world.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Simply this: it is for us to resist with all our might the subtle, silent … temptation to go through a day – or any part of a day- without acknowledging that it is by the goodness of God that we were brought into this world, that it is by the grace of God that we are being kept all the day long, even until this very hour, and that it is by the love of God, fully revealed in the face of Jesus, that we are being redeemed.

Let’s pray.

Blessed Are …

Sunday, January 30th, 2005
Epiphany 4
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Matthew 5:1-12

1When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: 3 ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. 8‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 9‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 10‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Blending hope and blessing to sooth the aches and pains of those who are, by most worldly standards, the ones least likely to succeed: the poor in spirit, mourners, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted for Christ’s sake. The beatitudes. They are the quintessential preaching points of the Christian faith.

There is, as always, a danger with a passage of scripture becoming too familiar to us. We tend to overlook things we wouldn’t otherwise. To begin with, there’s the unspoken question of the converse of the list – what happens to those who ARE rich in spirit, those who … rejoice, those would seem to be qualities that would be desirable, would they not? In a sense, the first two beatitudes are directed to people for whom we would all have some measure of compassion. The next group, though, would be less an object of compassion and perhaps more a cause for distress: the assertive, to not say aggressive, those who DO NOT hunger and thirst for righteousness, who see no need to get to know their softer side, as it were, those who are ruthless, those whose hearts are full of impure motives? It would seem to be self-evident that they would not be so blessed. So we can pack that point up and move on, can’t we? We can, unless we find ourselves counted among the second group rather than the first.

Where do we stand? Truth be told, none of us are permanently on one side or the other of these qualities. Human nature is changeable, and we sometimes find ourselves being rich in spirit and at other times poor, merciful and ruthless, meek and aggressive, hungering for righteousness one day and indifferent the next.

Jesus knew that. He knew who he was talking to, both then and now. That is what makes this Sermon on the Mount so dynamic. It moves with the time it is in. Regardless of when and where it is read, it applies. It speaks to the eternal nature of the word of God.

So do we leave it at that? At being a listing of those who are blessed, draw what comfort and strength we can from that, and move on? Or is there another way to read this, to apply this, to incorporate this into how we live out our faith?

Can we read the beatitudes as challenges? Can we reread the beatitudes as Jesus telling us how we should be, how we should act, how we should live? There’s a phrase you may have heard Leslie or me use at some point – “don’t should on yourself.” The resemblance to the … less than properly worded alternative is intentional. The parallel thought is assumed. There’s a point at which we hear that in Jesus’ words throughout the gospels. It’s the reason the word ‘sermon’ has acquired something of a negative connotation. In today’s popular culture, we tend to shy away from accountability. There’s an almost-immediate reaction against anyone telling us we should or should not be doing something. ‘Don’t tell me what to do!’ is a phrase we would all at some point resoundingly affirm, regardless of who we heard it from.

Here’s where we get into the issue that is at the heart of the Christian faith: authority. You may have heard it referred to as the counterpoint of serving God and Mammon, or in contemporary language, being selfish versus being selfless. What it boils down to is this: if we as Christians claim Jesus Christ as Lord of our lives, that word, LORD has to mean something. Among other things, it means being subject, being accountable, being submissive to what the Lord requires of us. The passage from Micah is beautiful both in form and function:

“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

We’d like to leave it at that, and in many ways we can, even as a Gospel people, reading the Old Testament through the lens of Easter, there is completeness in the Micah text that sums it up for us. That’s what we like about bumper stickers, isn’t it?

What Jesus is doing is fleshing that out. He gets into specifics. He fills in the blanks. He answers the question: What does that mean?

We would rather live in generalities, as a people, leaving the specifics to each individual. In fact, that is a hallmark of Baptist theology – we call it Soul Competency. Each individual has the capacity to sense, discern and respond to the movement of God in their lives through the Holy Spirit. The corollary to that tenet is that there is a … need … a requirement to know the source as well as possible in order to be able to do that discerning, that sensing … that … following … so we put a lot of emphasis on scripture. We believe Jesus did too. He was constantly quoting scripture – to his disciples, to the crowds that gathered, to the religious leaders of the time, and interpreting it for them in the way it should have been from the beginning. There’s that word again – SHOULD.

So we need to get over being told what to do. Not because we should accept anyone telling us what to do, but because of WHO is telling us. If we believe that Jesus is who he said he is, then we need to listen to what he is telling us. Who BETTER to do so?

The tricky part is, how do we distinguish the message from the messenger? I could step up to this pulpit with an agenda, a preset list of issues to discuss and present and might be capable of presenting the message in such a way as to convince you that the way I see it is what Jesus was saying. In some ways, that’s my job in preaching. As Pastor I am charged with the responsibility to care for the spiritual wellbeing of the congregation as a whole and as individuals. And I will confess to you that I am aware that I interpret the Gospel in a certain way by nature – in other words, I’m drawing from the Gospel what I see through the lens of MY life and experience. But I want it to be clear that if and when I present that … view, that version, as it were, it is an exercise in self-awareness. What I would hope is that it would not be, as it says in the blurb in the announcement about the messages being online, taken as dictation, but rather as the beginning of a conversation. That is a responsibility that I do not believe I am called to - to interpret FOR you, to delineate, to define for you what the Gospel means. That is a responsibility that we each carry as Children of God. It is in the conversation that we are opened to thoughts we might not have had, to ideas we might not have considered, to views we could not have held, had we not been in community, and in that context, had we not been sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

That is the reason for our congregational benediction – the part about “May God take your minds and think through them, may God take your lips and speak through them” is not JUST about being God’s presence in the world, but it is about being in dialogue within this family of faith. To not be afraid to risk something big, how we see, how we believe, how we live, and present it to our brothers and sisters for something good – a deeper understanding, an ‘aha!’ moment, an epiphany of ‘I never thought of it like that before’.

So, blessed are those who search and hunger for righteousness, who can be poor or rich in Spirit, who mourn and rejoice, who are meek and not so meek, who are reviled for HIS sake, who gather here. We are blessed, but we are called. We are challenged to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters, to lay them down for our Lord, to seek – to live – the way to the truth and the life. We are one and the same. And we are called to more, we are challenged to more, by our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray.

Shifting Alliance

Sunday, January 16th, 2005
Epiphany 2
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
John 1:29-42

29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! 30This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” 31I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.’ 32And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 33I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” 34And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.’ 35The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, 36and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ 37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which translated means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’ 39He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. 40One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. 41He first found his brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which is translated Anointed). 42He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas’ (which is translated Peter).

Josh and Sam have been friends since college. They went through Law school together, and both became quickly disenchanted with the corporate law jobs they landed out of school. They made a promise to each other that if one of them ever came across ‘the real thing’ he would go find the other, and they would both fall in behind the one they found. There was a recklessness in the promise, a ‘damn the torpedoes’ sense of abandon. They would know. They just knew it.

Then one day, it happens. Sam is sitting in a meeting between his Law firm partners and their corporate client, a multinational shipping firm, discussing the details of how to avoid being penalized for operating unsafe tankers in order to maximize profits, when Josh shows up at the door. It’s a glass door. Sam glances over and sees Josh, and the look on Josh’s face is enough to tell Sam all he needs to know. He tries to excuse himself politely, but is pressed by his boss to stay. He looks at Josh again, and this time, he doesn’t ask permission. He stands up and takes a step towards the door, towards Josh, and simply says ‘I have to do this’, and walks out.

If you are a fan of ‘The West Wing’, I don’t need to fill in the blanks. If you are not, Josh Lyman and Sam Seaborn became the Deputy Chief of Staff and Deputy Communications Director, respectively, in the White House of the fictitious Josiah Bartlett administration.

The story and characters may be fictitious, the dynamics and truths of the human condition they speak to are not.

What does it mean to take a step of faith?

How big does that step have to be in order to qualify AS a step of faith?

A few weeks ago in our Wednesday night study in the book of Mark, we read about the young man who ran up to Jesus and fell to his knees and asked him what he needed to do to be saved. The other Gospels have made the man better known as the rich young ruler. Mark doesn’t present him that way.

The earliest and shortest Gospel presents him simply as a young man with an earnest desire to find what it was that was missing in his life. Though the presentation of the event is slightly different in Mark, Jesus ends up giving the man the same answer we have in the other Gospels: “go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." (19:21b)

Even though there is a conclusion to the scene, in the man going away grieving, because he had many possessions, the story doesn’t end there. Mark doesn’t tell us what happened with the rest of that man’s life.

Did he in fact take the step of faith that Jesus told him he needed to, and sell all he had and donate the proceeds to the poor? DID he come back after that and become a follower of Jesus?

Those hanging endings are not uncommon to find in the Gospels. I believe they are intentional. They allow us an opportunity to turn the questions raised on ourselves. What would *I* have done in that situation? How would *I* have responded? That’s part of what brings the scriptures to life.

In today’s text, we are treated to a story with something of an ending … it doesn’t leave us hanging in the same way as Jesus’ encounter with the rich young man.

Here we have John the Baptist, the biggest name in wilderness –wandering prophetic voices of the day in first century Palestine, doing what HE does best – calling. This time, he is recognizing Jesus for who HE is – the Lamb of God. The baptism has already taken place. We went over that last Sunday. John has already protested that Jesus should be the one baptizing HIM, and Jesus politely refutes him and they proceed with the original plan. As we read last week, when Jesus came up out of the water, the Spirit of God descended on him like a dove, and he heard a voice from heaven speak, saying, “this is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” I wonder what it was like for John, to one day have crowds coming to him to be baptized by the hundreds, and then to be face to face with the messiah, who turns out to be his cousin.

I’ve got several cousins … one works in the telecom industry, another is a narcotics police officer, and another is a Pastor, another runs his own business, and another works for a large agricultural supply firm. I’ve got others, but I’m not close enough to them to know what they do … I love them all, and they are all Godly men, as far as I know, but if one of them walked through that door and I realized that in that walking in they were the Messiah, it would take a dove from heaven and the voice of God to convince me that it was true.

I have to wonder what it was like for John. It is interesting that the narrative in John doesn’t include the actual baptism of Jesus, for that we had to go to Matthew’s gospel last week, but it seems to weave its way around the event, speaking more to the importance and the meaning of it rather than dwell on the particulars of it … and picks up right after … the next day, in fact, which is where the text begins for today.

It says something about the nature of John the Baptist to have him still carrying out his duties, as it were, even after the Messiah has been revealed to him. He still has followers, disciples, as it were, who were following him around. The first paragraph covers two days’ time, and have in them two encounters between Jesus and John the Baptist.

Jesus says nothing in either of them.

John does all the talking. Rather, all the declaring, the proclaiming. Testifying is the term used in the text. John testifies “I saw the Spirit descending” … there is a willingness to … direct those who are listening to him towards him whom HE has been looking for and proclaiming all HIS life, even to his seeming detriment.

He (John) has a couple of his own disciples with him on the second day. When he sees Jesus that time, he doesn’t seem to hesitate, but tells them “you know who I’ve been talking about all this time? THAT’S THE GUY! THAT’S HIM!!!” I can almost see him pushing the two disciples away from himself toward Jesus after he’s gone past, and can you picture the looks on the faces of the two men as they hesitantly take those first steps towards Jesus? Their body language that says ‘but, John, we’ve gotten used to following YOU around … you really want us to go follow … him???”

Isn’t it the case that one’s importance is determined by the size of one’s following, by one’s popularity? You certainly wouldn’t want to lose followers, much less encourage them to leave, would you?

Again, that was John. He knew what he was here for.

HIS alliance didn’t shift, but because it didn’t, his disciples’ alliance HAD to. All along, he was the one preparing the way – the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘make straight the way of the Lord’.

His disciples, though hesitant, did take that step of faith … from following John, to following Jesus. When Jesus noticed they were following him, his question was ‘What are you looking for?’ It’s a question with several layers of meaning, and one that he continues to ask US here today. Their answer is a foreshadowing of the next three years. They think in concrete terms: do you have a place to stay? The question behind the question is, of course, less interested in where Jesus is resting his head and more interested in where THEY may rest theirs … ‘if we follow you, will WE have a place to stay?’

It seems we can never entirely loose ourselves of the routine concerns of daily life. Will we have a roof over our heads? Will we have food on our table? Will we have clothes on our backs?

They are all valid concerns, but ones that we must, nonetheless, place in their proper place.

Any time I begin in on this subject, I feel entirely inadequate. I live in a beautiful house, have more than enough clothes, food, and other provisions to make me one of the richest people on earth – I don’t mean in strictly financial terms – but in comparison to the rest of the world population, I am wealthy beyond measure.

What we are speaking of this morning is alliance – allegiance, if you will – submission - to whom or to what are we giving our lives? Do we fill our days in pursuit of wealth? Jesus has a word for us in the story of the rich young ruler. Do we fill our time seeking position? Jesus has a word for us in his response to the request his disciples made to sit at his right and left hand in Glory. Do we seek wisdom? The Psalmist tells us the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. Do we seek our fulfillment in work? The parable of the rich farmer who dies with full granaries gives us an idea of where God is calling us.

God calls us to action, but not if in the acting we lose sight of who we are acting for. God calls us to be rich, but rich in spirit, in love, and in grace. God calls us to seek our position – but God also tells us that the greatest of these will be the least – to be servant of all. God calls us to be wise – to be in love with him – and all else will follow. God calls us to be about his work, and that work can and is radically different from what the world would consider work.

For us here this morning at Jerusalem Baptist Church: where is our allegiance? Whom are we submitted to? Are we trying to steer our own path? Are we here simply as a formality, because we’ve always been here at this hour on Sunday mornings, and it would be unseemly to not show up? Are we here because at some point in our past we felt God stir in our hearts, but that stirring has long since quieted, and we continue to come, hoping that something will happen, that someone will say something that will stir us again?

We can hold an alliance to tradition, to formality, to continuing to do things the way they’ve always been done, and lose sight of the one who needs to hold our ultimate loyalty.

So the question this morning is a hanging one; an open ended question, and we each must answer it for ourselves, and go from there. The rest of our lives have yet to be written.

Who or what holds your ultimate allegiance, and does it need to shift?

Let’s pray.

I Have …

Sunday, January 9th, 2005
(Third after Christmas)
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Matthew 3:13-17; Isaiah 42:1-9

Matthew 3:13-17

13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ 15But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then he consented. 16And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’

Isaiah 42:1-9

1 Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. 2He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; 3a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. 4He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching. 5 Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it: 6I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, 7to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. 8I am the LORD, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols. 9See, the former things have come to pass, and new
things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.

We’re still at the beginning of the year, in relation to the calendar. So it seems entirely appropriate to be reading of the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. The event marked by his Baptism in the Jordan River. Most often it is quoted in the context of a service which includes a Baptism or two. My friend Jay Voorhees is doing just that this morning at Antioch United Methodist church in Nashville. He’s drawing the parallels between how we approach Baptism and how the Jewish faith celebrates Yom Kippur; as a dedication of the upcoming year to God. Again, an entirely appropriate and meaningful parallel. There are some differences in how Methodists and Baptists approach the act of Baptism, but one thing that he noted made me sit up and think.

What we read in the text is that after Jesus came up out of the water, “the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove.” As Baptists, we traditionally emphasize the fact that following Christ in the waters of Baptism is a sign of obedience.

It is.

We should “so seek to follow Christ ourselves” that that would be a step we can take willingly and joyfully, an act that reminds us of the death, burial, and resurrection not only of Christ, but of ourselves – to our old life, and of being reborn in the newness of life in Christ. Our focus is on the responsive nature of our action. In other words, we do it in response to what God has done in our lives. But let’s try this morning to look at it from another angle.

Baptism is a powerful thing. To be honest with you, when I first met Father Duffy, the priest at St. Timothy’s over in Tappahannock, I was surprised. In the course of our conversation, he mentioned a man who was attending church there and wanted to join the parish. This man had apparently been a member here at some point in the past, and Father Duffy wanted to confirm if the man had been baptized here. His reason was simple. The Catholic Church does not re-baptize anyone if they’ve already been baptized in another Christian tradition.

What surprised me about that was that there really is more going on in the act of baptism than simply an obedient response on the part of the person being baptized. It is somewhat foreign to me, this idea that there’s more going on … I’m not always comfortable with anything that smacks of mysticism, but I have come to the realization that in order to embrace faith, there is a mystic element to the practice of faith that MUST be present in order for us to allow for the movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives, in our hearts, and in our work. Consider for a moment that the act is not just one of obedience, but that it is also a signal, a marker to us that God is at work in our lives from then on – and usually BEFORE the – on.

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings tells the story of an angel that is blown down to earth by a violent rainstorm, while on an errand from God. A peasant couple, Pelayo and Elisenda, find him. They are shocked when they find him, but they never falter, or question his existence. In THAT sense, they take the fact that they came across a heavenly being on their walk through the country completely in stride. “Before the arrival of the angel, they are a simple, poor family with a dying son. Once the angel is captured, the son recovers and the family uses the angel for financial gain. Marquez shows us true human nature. An incredible being falls to the Earth and the humans use it to make a fast buck.” [1]

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian author, uses the hallmark of his style of writing – what has come to be regarded as a genre unto itself – ‘Magical Realism’, throughout the story.

"Magical realism expands the categories of the real so as to encompass myth, magic and other extraordinary phenomena in Nature or experience which European realism excluded"[2]

I’m not proposing we should adopt a form of literature to provide the guideline for how we should live our lives, but we could take a hint from it.

If we hold God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ, and the presence of the Holy Spirit in the world today to be central and true to our faith, then we can live every day with a Magical realism that far surpasses any literary attempt to put it into words.

I was looking through a promotional brochure last night for a young adult conference, and the tag line was ‘blur the line between faith and life’.

I’m thinking there should be no line – blurry or otherwise – between faith and life. I can understand what the promoter was trying to say, but I’m not so sure we should allow for any distinction between how ‘faith’ operates in our lives and how we live our regular, day-to-day lives. It gives the impression that we can appropriately separate the two.

We can of course. It’s easy if you miss the point. The question is, is that something you WANT to do, or something that just happened without your realizing it?

If our example is Jesus, and he is, then there was no compartmentalization going on in his life and faith. For him, to breath was to be in communion with God. To confront the Pharisees and Sadducees, and to heal the lepers and the paralytics were all just as much acts of worship as they were events that found their way in to the run-of-the-mill daily occurrences in the lives of the people of Galilee and Judea. He didn’t save the good stuff for Sundays.

Let’s jump to the Isaiah passage. It picks up where the passage in Matthew lets off. In it, God continues to extol the virtues and acts of the Messiah. (Read).

Notice the shift from the second person (he will bring forth justice, he will not cry, he will not break …), to the first person (I have called you, I have taken you, I have given you …).

In those few sentences we see the whole movement of the Gospel: from the distant to the immediate, from impersonal, to the personal. From the other, unknowable God, to the God who walked among us. From the vengeful, angry, jealous God, to the God who would invite us each to gather around the table and join him in the feast, and walk with him in relationship, in love, and in discipleship.

And so we come to the table, at the invitation of the most high God.

Let’s pray.


[1] Gabriel García Márquez, eds. Bernard McGuirk and Richard Cardwell, p 204.
[2] Ibid, p 45

Setting Sights

Sunday, January 2nd. 2005
(Second after Christmas, Epiphany)
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Matthew 2:1-12

A foreword:

For almost the last two weeks I have been ‘perking’ today’s message. For the last week, I have, in a parallel way, been catching what I could of the developments related to the Earthquake and Tsunamis that hit Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and the other countries around the Indian Ocean.

Last night, as I sat down to put on paper the message related to the text for today, it hit me that, just as I expected Father Win Lewis, the rector of Old Donation Episcopal Church in Virginia Beach, to say something that would lend meaning to the events of September 11th, 2001, when I went to the prayer vigil that evening, I wondered if you would expect the same of me this morning, in light of what we have heard and seen of the unfolding tragedy and unimaginable suffering of those who have lost everything – EVERYTHING and are trying to survive after … having survived the initial disaster.

If your question is “why?”, all I can do is refer you to Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, chapter 8, beginning around verse 19, but especially verse 22, where he speaks of ‘creation groaning in labor pains until now …’ and entreat you to each find a way to do something -- however small, through whatever agency. I read some statistics last night – there are approximately 189 million working adults in the United States today. If each of us gave $100.00 towards relief efforts, we would be sending about 18 Billion (with a B) dollars to help with relief and reconstruction efforts. Another way to approach it is this: there are about 169,000 congregations that make up the top ten denominations in the United States. What if each of those congregations was to give $500 toward Asian relief? We would be able to give 84.5 million dollars toward these efforts. (thanks Jay for the stats)

The one thing we CAN do immediately is to continue to lift up our brothers and sisters, those who have lost so much, as well as those who are on the front lines of providing relief, in prayer. So let’s do that right now. Please bow with me:

God of Compassion, with you and all the world family, we weep and mourn. Comfort all who are alone or afraid, who wail in loud lamentation. Let us be your heart reaching out to those who grieve. Let us be your hands working to assist those who still live. For you are the God who stands with the least and the lost. Come by here, Lord. Come by Sri Lanka, and India, and Indonesia. Come by all the places that need your comforting and healing presence. Amen.

1In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’ 3When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: 6“And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.”’ 7Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’
9 When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

What’s he doing? Doesn’t he know it’s AFTER Christmas? That’s part of the Christmas story!

Yes, I DO know it is after Christmas, and yes, the passage IS part of the Christmas story, but today is ALSO the Sunday before the celebration of the Epiphany, which falls on January 6th, the day marks the traditional arrival of the three wise men to the place where Jesus was with his family, before the flight to Egypt, on the 12th day after Christmas (hence the song). Bear with me; let’s see where this takes us.

I always got in trouble with the backstroke. For the longest time, I wasn’t able to figure out that, in order to move in a straight line, and in the absence of floater lines on either side of the travel lane, the best way to get from one side of the pool to the other involved fixing your position on a spot or an object at the end of the pool you just dove off of, and keeping your body in line with IT, in order to make your way down the length of the pool to the other side. Part of the problem with THAT was the fact that, after a certain distance, my nearsightedness made it hard for me to distinguish smaller objects on which I might have focused. It didn’t take me long to figure out that, when doing the breast stroke or the crawl, the best way to keep within your lane was to watch the nice, WIDE stripe so generously provided for you on the bottom of the pool.

Santiago summers are hot. Dry and Hot. Hotter than summers outside Santiago, mainly due to the amount of pavement that is absorbing, retaining, and reflecting the sun and heat back up at you. Since there is little to no rain in summer, and Santiago is in a bowl – surrounded by mountains – it’s your basic frying pan. The main objective in summer is to get out of the city as often and for as long as possible.

I enjoyed staying in Santiago. The pace slowed down, since so much of the population spent the summer outside the city, and there was still stuff to do. My favorite activity by far, though, was swimming. We lived just a few blocks from the community pool, just enough of a walk to work up a sweat while you walked there and long enough to dry off as you walked back. Often, we would head out early enough to get there before they actually opened the pool for the day, and ended up waiting for them to finish pouring in the chlorine and impatiently waiting for the minutes to tick by before the chemicals had sufficiently diluted themselves before we could dive in. We STILL wound up with stinging, red-rimmed eyes and itchy noses, and green hair, but it was a small price to pay for the sheer joy of diving into the deep end of the pool and opening your eyes underwater, looking across the expanse of the pool and seeing the other side, with sunlight dappling the sides and bottom of the pool. It created a magical quiet place to which I readily escaped, weightlessly floating until i couldn't hold my breath any longer.

We know the story. We’ve heard it, or most of it, as far back as we can remember. Mary and an angel, Joseph and an angel, shepherds and a whole bunch of angels … then Herod comes into the picture and three wise men from the east do too. Being foreigners, they check in at the desk, so to speak, when they get to the area, and let the local King know why they are there. The local King, along with ‘all of Jerusalem’ – in an interesting parallel to a similar response at the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry – is frightened. As usual, they are frightened of what they don’t understand and cannot control. How unusual is that? But let’s focus on the last 4 verses: (read)

8Then he (Herod) sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’ 9 When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

The celebration of epiphany is the celebration of the giving of the gifts. Again, the song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ makes that aspect of the celebration apparent. On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me…

It is interesting to me that we also use the term to signal a moment – an event - a transformative second when we have a glorious unveiling – a dazzling moment of clarity when an idea hits us, or when we suddenly realize something that afterwards seems obvious, or a given, where before we seemed to be muddling along in a thick soup, unaware of anything remotely as apparent as that would soon come to be.

In any case, we have the wise men, who apparently spent a good portion of their time observing the heavens, at least enough to note the coming of the star of Bethlehem, and even more importantly, to recognize its significance. They realized the importance of the event. Scripture doesn’t go into a lot of detail about HOW they did that, but in their response to the coming of the star, they demonstrated that on some level, they understood the coming of the star, and the coming of the Christ child as an epiphany in world history.

So they set off, and set their sights on the star, and made their way to Judea. They were briefly sidetracked by Herod, but then were able to get back on track and make their way, still, following the star, until it brought them to the place where they were “overwhelmed with joy.” Can we identify a place or a time in our lives when WE were ‘overwhelmed with Joy’?

It seems like such a trivial question in the face of the incredible suffering we’ve witnessed since last Sunday, and yet, that’s the starting point. If we are going to respond to tragedy, it will come out of our response to the unmerited grace of God in touching OUR lives, in changing US, in having been rescued, and welcomed, and comforted and surrounded by the presence of God through the family of God. We have an opportunity to gift the sorrowing world with the presence of God in a way that we seldom do.

We can get bogged down in the smallness of our contribution. I used to get so frustrated, after having concentrated so hard on making my arms go to the same place with each stroke, but having kept my face facing directly up, I had no point of reference by which to gauge where I was headed, and I always ended up disoriented, hitting the side of the pool with my left arm, or worse, with my head. Once I learned the importance of maintaining that point of reference, getting from one end of the pool to the other became a matter of time, and not direction. Keeping an eye on where I was coming from helped me get to where I was going.

We have no choice about diving into 2005. That has already happened. What we DO have a choice about, of course, is … what course we will set for ourselves as we move through the year. Will we be focusing on where we’re coming from, or where we’re going? Or is it possible to hold both within us, letting the one inform the other – helping us maintain our bearings, and set our sights on the prize that is before us?

Let’s pray.

What Did You Expect?

Sunday, December 12th, 2004
Third Sunday of Advent (Joy)
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Matthew 11:2-11

2When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples 3and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’ 4Jesus answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. 6And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.’
7 As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: ‘What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? 8What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. 9What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 10This is the one about whom it is written, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.” 11Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

What did you expect, people?

Did you really think that what you would find in the wilderness was a soft-spoken, gentle, meek, warm and fuzzy sort of a man, who would ask you to “please, if you don’t mind, could you, maybe, just maybe, if you’re not doing anything else important, um … sorry to have to use this word … but … repent? (pretty please with sugar on it and a cherry on top?)”

What did you expect, John?

You’ve been telling people for some time now what to look for, and here it is, all happening just like you and the other prophets said it would. The blind are seeing, the lame are walking, lepers are being healed, the deaf are hearing, the dead are being raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. What more do you want? What better proof do you need?

Sometimes there ISN’T so much lost in the translation, is there?

As much as I’ve grown to appreciate liturgy and ritual over the years, and the solemnity and weight that they can bring to a worship service, there is a definite risk in continuing in that – whatever form of … formality it takes, since there are variations. The forms of worship, such as the discipline of silence that we observed a few minutes ago, or the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, or the congregational benediction we share at the end of most of our services, in the best sense of the word, lend a predictability to worship that we, being the creatures of habit that we are, find comforting and reassuring in their familiarity, that aspect of them that is most appealing is that in the midst of an unpredictable world, fraught with changing social mores, political upheavals, economic fluctuations, the possibility of waking up one day to a phone call telling of a dear friend’s death, or of a potentially fatal illness of our own, there is much that is reassuring in predictability.

What did you expect?

The thing is, we build up immunity to the predictable. Familiarity breeds contempt. Rote memorization does not engage the heart, just the brain. And the message, whatever that message is, gets lost in the memorization process. We love the old hymns, and we sing them with hardly a glance at the words, either by our eyes OR our hearts. That is why it’s good to occasionally listen to what you are singing, and THINK about the words. If we were to recite the Lord ’s Prayer each Sunday, as some do, it would fairly quickly become little more than a time marker for how far along we are in the service.

Up until a couple of months ago, at a certain point in each message, I would bring up the question “So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?” You may or may not have noticed I stopped using that device. (For a while, I should say.) The reason is that someone whose judgment I trust implicitly told me one day that it worked for a while, but it had become the cue to mentally check out and start thinking about where to eat lunch, here comes the end of the sermon, and for the musicians to get up to the piano and the organ. Not that those are bad things, it just helps to occasionally shake things up a bit.

So there is God. Watching and waiting for the fullness of time. God has, through the prophets, let the people know what to expect, what to look for in the Messiah, and how to recognize him. For them, it’s been hundreds of years. As far back as anyone can remember, they’ve all been saying the same thing. And somewhere back around their great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, it stopped being about the Messiah and started being about the way it was being said, or chanted, or phrased, and by whom, and how often, and on what days, and with what clothes, and with what … accessories.

What did you expect?

It would seem that nothing else was happening. At least nothing like what Isaiah had told of. Actually, yes, there were things happening. Israel got Judges, then some pretty good kings, then a great king, then a not so great king, then several not so great kings, then they got invaded, then the tribes got split up, and the northern Kingdom pretty much disappeared, and the last two tribes, this remnant, this runt of a country was left, constantly being kicked around by bigger neighbors, forced into exile by Babylonians, overrun by Egyptians, Syrians, a whole bunch of political disasters … so the people of Israel got tired of being kicked around, and started to look for a way out … and they were still reading these same passages, and they began to see them in light of THEIR circumstances …

What did you expect?

WE do that on a regular basis. We can’t help it. It’s part of what keeps the word alive for us.

So, what does God’s word have for us here, now, today, at Jerusalem Baptist Church?

Let’s change the emphasis of the question: what did you expect?

When you stepped into the sanctuary this morning, what did you expect? Did you sit in the same seat, smile at the same people and make the same comments about the weather to your neighbor? During the hymns, especially this time of year, did you simply mouth the words, or simply listen to others as they sang? During the discipline of silence, were your thoughts more on ‘how much longer this will go before he starts to pray?’ Or were you truly disciplining yourself into the silence?

What did you expect?

Today is the Third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of Joy. We’ve observed the lighting of the candles of Hope, Peace, and today, Joy. Next Sunday will be the Sunday of love. As I mentioned on the first Sunday of advent, this is a time of anticipation – of waiting – of waiting for the coming of the Christ Child, and on Christmas Eve we will light the Christ candle.

At the beginning of the text this morning, Jesus tells John’s disciples who’ve come to ask him if he really is the one they’ve been waiting for to “go and tell what you have heard and seen.”

So we are about that business, still. 2000 years later. Going and telling what we have heard and seen God do in our own lives, in our own hearts, in our own families, and in the lives of those around us.

Our telling is to be … full of joy … shedding joy, reeking of joy, because it is the ultimate joy, to be called children of God.

Let’s pray.

Prepare the Way

Sunday, December 5th. 2004
Second Sunday of Advent (Peace)
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Matthew 3:1-12

1In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 2‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 3This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, ‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”’ 4Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, 6and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 7 But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8Bear fruit worthy of repentance. 9Do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor”; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 10Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 11‘I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

Peace, like war, is waged.
Peace plans its strategy and encircles the enemy.
Peace marshals its forces and storms the gates.
Peace gathers its weapons and pierces the defense.
Peace, like war, is waged.
But Christ has turned it all around:
the weapons of peace are love, joy, goodness, longsuffering;
the arms of peace are justice, truth, patience, prayer;
the strategy of peace brings safety, welfare, happiness;
the forces of peace are the sons and daughters of God.

This poem by Walker Knight was what first brought to my attention the existence of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America. It was founded by a small group of people at Deer Park Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 31st, 1984.

The poem was first published in the Home Missions magazine in 1972. At the time I first read the poem, the country was not engaged in any sort of action that could be considered outright ‘war’ – at least not to the public’s knowledge. There were peacekeeping operations going on in the middle east as well as a couple of other places around the globe, but there was no military conflict comparable to the one that was going on at the time the poem was originally written – the Vietnam war.

Once a year, the Fellowship gathers for a retreat, to work out a continuing strategy to achieve peace in real, physical, tangible ways, primarily focused around issues of justice. Part of the tradition that has grown up around these gatherings has been that they are as much a spiritual retreat as a planning meeting. To that end, each year a passage of scripture is chosen as a theme around which to center that prayer and devotional time, and a banner is made, similar to the ones we would otherwise have hanging behind me on the wall, with the scripture on it.

This year, the man who was carrying the banner to the gathering was stopped, and the case in which the banner was carried was confiscated by agents at the airport. No reason was given for the confiscation. After a two week period, the man was notified that he could return and pick up the suitcase with the banner inside. That was, of course, after the gathering had taken place. No explanation was given, no apology, no reason as to why the banner was confiscated. The absence of the banner did not stop the retreat or the prayers for peace.

It seems that even today, there are those who would hold suspect any organization trying to promote peace in the midst of conflict, perhaps doubting the sincerity of the motives, perhaps questioning the validity of their call to prophetically speak against the grain of what would seem to be most things Baptist. We are, after all, the only denomination to have come out in favor of the war in Iraq. Perhaps it would do us good to lend an ear to those with whom we might disagree, there might be something to learn in the tension created between differing viewpoints.

There is another tension I’d like to talk about this morning.

One of the biblical names for Jesus is ‘Prince of Peace’. There’s a reason for that. He is the one who brings ultimate peace to our lives. It’s not always immediate, it’s not always smooth, and it is not free from rough spots. Anyone in this room can probably attest to that.

We heard a few minutes ago, Lindsey reading from the book of Micah, 4:3-4:

“He will judge between people from many nations. He’ll settle problems among strong nations everywhere. They will hammer their swords into plows. They’ll hammer their spears into pruning tools. Nations will not go to war against one another. They won’t event train to fight anymore. Every man will have his own vine and fig tree. And no one will make them afraid. That’s what the Lord who rules over all has promised.”

So it seems a bit jarring that the passage from Matthew this morning sets Jesus up as something of an instigator and not so much a peacemaker; the words are coming from John’s mouth, but they could just as well have come from Jesus’. “Brood of vipers” is not exactly what you’d call a ‘term of endearment’. It is not designed to “win friends and influence people”.

In this case, what it IS doing is speaking truth. Calling a spade a spade was something Jesus was both good at and unafraid to do. No matter WHOM he was talking to. He didn’t let the Pharisees get by without calling their bluff, or the Sadducees, or the Samaritan woman at the well, or the woman caught in adultery, or his own disciples. Though the ultimate result is and will be peace, the road to reach it is anything but smooth.

If we are called to be Christ’s presence in this world, we are called to be imitators of him. We are to be about the business of building the Kingdom of God – on earth. That is our duty, that is our call, that is our goal, because that is what we have to work with. We live in the present with our hope in the future. We live in the midst of turmoil and pestilence. We live in an age that does not know peace – true peace. It is reflected in so many ways. It is reflected in the incredible inequities we find in our very own society. It is reflected in the constant outbreaks of wars, and insurrections, and infighting between those who should be brothers, it is reflected in estrangement between family members, and broken relationships, and physical and emotional abuse, it is found in the horrible mistreatment of animals, in the exploitation of natural resources with little or no regard for the long-term consequences for our children and their children, it is found in the world at large turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the masses of hurting and dying people who COULD BE helped, if we only had the heart.

Yes, we are working toward the hope of one day experiencing the Kingdom of God directly – when we are in God’s presence, but for now, we are to be

‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’

For those of you who were here last Sunday afternoon and evening, I believe we caught a glimpse of what it looks like to make that path straight. With over 60 of our Mexican friends in attendance, the presence of each of you around those tables, smiling and laughing, going over English vocabulary or working in the kitchen, preparing the trays, and yeah, even fretting about whether or not we were going to have enough food to feed everyone, you were preparing the way of the Lord.

Most often, we understand the second coming of Christ to be … shall we say, a … dramatic event. Not something that you might, say, sleep through; angels, and fire, and clouds of light, trumpets, the works.

Picture it, if you will, as unlikely as it may seem; a world that has been so infused with the presence and the work of the Holy Spirit, that the coming of the Kingdom is indeed like that of ‘a thief in the night’ – but in the best sense of the word. Unexpected, yes, but at the same time, the ‘after’ not greatly different from what was there ‘before’. Can you imagine, if we as the body of Christ were to carry out our calling as thoroughly and completely as we could, alongside every other member of the body of Christ? Can you imagine what the world would look like if most of the work of breaking in the Kingdom had already been accomplished?

It’s a dream, I know, perhaps an unrealistic one.

But then, what are dreams for?

Let’s pray.